


I Know I'm Not Forgiven

by jat_sapphire



Category: The Professionals
Genre: Animal Transformation, Established Relationship, Halloween, M/M, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-03
Updated: 2018-10-03
Packaged: 2019-07-24 20:33:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16182674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jat_sapphire/pseuds/jat_sapphire
Summary: Bodie’s old mercenary mob get him into some unique trouble.  Doyle needs to help control it.  Epigraphs are from lyrics of “This Night” by Black Lab,here in a Professionals fanvid by bistoprofi.





	I Know I'm Not Forgiven

Prologue

> _There's a gift_  
>  _That you sent_  
>  _You sent it_  
>  _My way_  
> 

 

They were all young, so young that the year or so difference among their ages loomed large, especially for Bodie, youngest of all. There were seven of them, which they decided was lucky. Xave had complicated calculations to decide what bets to make, which jobs to take. As long as they came out alive, Bodie didn't mind, but when Jojo stepped on a mine on a lucky day, Bodie started trusting his own feelings just as much.

Between jobs, they'd stopped together in a town in north Angola, and the others pushed Bodie to go to the whorehouse, but the women there looked mostly dead already. Sam never stopped asking. He went every night. Bodie’s own hand was better, he decided. Nicky's arse was better yet, but he didn't say yes often. Yves would give blowjobs, but only if Bodie gave them back, and he was a dirty little sod, so it wasn't pleasant.

You could only play cards so much, was the problem. Mac had a fine line in bullshit, and Bodie was learning how to blow smoke back, but he was limited in what they'd believe from him since they knew his age and Xave had even been on the merchant navy ship with him.

They ended up doing any number of reckless and odd things to pass the time. This, though, was the oddest. Mac had herded them to the little shack where he said the witch lived. Bodie, expecting there to be money or advantage to Mac in this somewhere, had tried to ask around, but no one would say anything except that she was a foreigner. He wondered if that meant white.

Afterwards, he still didn't know, which bothered him for reasons he couldn’t put into words.

The shack had no real windows, so it was full of shadow as well as smoke. Her face was sooty. Her hands looked like the dirt was worked into the bones, which seemed right at the surface anyway. The only thing he could see was that she was lighter of skin and hair than many Africans.

He paid her, and she took his hand in both hers, one clamped around his wrist and the other stroking palm and fingers in a tickling, random pattern. It was weirdly sensual. When she began humming tunelessly, he was appalled to find himself getting hard. Mac better not see, or his life wouldn't be worth living.

"Shh, shh, pretty boy," she said. He stopped trying to pull his hand away. "I don't read palms. I don't touch anywhere else. I just See."

Her lips pursed, twisted, mumbled without sound. Then she said, "You're like wool almost too knotted to weave. I can hardly separate all your strands, all your colours. What a life! Dangers and losses, chances, many kinds of work. Love and death. Take the upward road when you can. There are always pits to fall in."

She paused. He wondered if she was going to say anything worth listening to.

"You'll be given a curse. Cursed with a gift. Share it, share yourself. That will untangle you. You can be bright, bright!" She let go his hand and patted his cheek.

Later, Mac insisted on knowing what she said to each of them. She had told them all they were cursed and gifted. To Bodie, that meant it was all nonsense.

He forgot the whole thing. Mostly.

It was about a month later when they took the bultungin job, and at the end of that, when he stood surrounded by animal and human guts and limbs and blood, Krivas’s offer looked good. So he took it.

 

1.

> _There are things_  
>  _I have done_  
>  _There's a place_  
>  _I have come_  
> 

 

Doyle makes a decision while waiting for Bodie at the urgent treatment centre: the next time he hears Bodie say anything about mercenaries or jungle, he’ll just shoot _right away_. Anyone his partner knew in those days is pure poison.

As it is, he keeps drawing and putting away his gun, more nervous than the nature of Bodie’s injury can really justify. This anger has been settling into the back of his brain too long, and it’s a kind of itch he usually finds a way to scratch.   But there’s nobody to punch out, and the walls look too solid.

It’s too late for the moon; the fluorescent lights bleach everything, as if it’s all gone to bone. The clock doesn’t tick often enough.

At last, Bodie emerges, bandaged on the left arm where the slashes are, right hand supporting it. He has a strained look on his face, a twist to his mouth. The stitches must hurt.

“Painkiller?” Doyle asks.

“Gave me a shot and a prescription to fill tomorrow.”

Doyle grunts to indicate that he knows that’s insufficient, but there’s no use talking about it. Not enough night is left for conversation. Bodie evidently agrees, and they’re at his flat before either of them uses words again. Bodie’s green in the streetlights. To open the door, he has to reach across and under the bandaged arm, and it’s awkward.

Doyle says, irritably, “Should I?”

“ _No_ ,” Bodie says and the door pops open. He’s out and into the flat before Doyle can even say goodnight, or perhaps good morning since it’s now nearly 5:00 am. Still dark as a boot, mid-October.

Cowley gives Bodie a few days off to heal, and then the two of them have a day obbo. They’re both sullen and bored, and Bodie’s unusually snappish. At the end of every shift, he’s away before 6:00 and never to the pub, much less to Doyle’s.

A partnership like theirs, Doyle tells himself, has highs and lows. Sometimes weeks go by when they hardly part, sleep and work and pub and sex and takeaway and sleep again; then they recoil and nurse their loneliness, go back to darts and birds and cricket (for Bodie) and motorbikes (for Doyle) until they crash back together, fold into each other, and are bound again until they tear free.

Probably not healthy. Nor is CI5.

When the obbo is finished, they’re back at HQ on call, where Bodie has quit collecting numbers, boasting of birds, or even flirting. He’s strange with the women, bashful. Doyle would have sworn that Bodie never knew what “bashful” meant, at least since the merchant navy, whenever that really was. He _runs errands_ for Betty and Liz and Julie, makes them tea and fetches their mail.

He’s not avoiding Doyle as much, anyway, so in the car as they go to relieve Jax and Murphy at a babysitting job, Doyle can finally ask, “Got a new bird? Seems you’re busy nowadays.”

Bodie, who’s been sitting on the base of his spine with his mouth parted and his tongue a little out, completely unlike himself, closes his mouth with a snap and seems to wake up. “Uh? Oh, no, my son, I am not consorting with any female. No, no, they’ll eat you alive, they will.”

Uneasy, Doyle shrugs. “More for me.” He wants to ask what happened the other night, when all this strangeness started, but he can’t think how to start.

From his own point of view, the night began when Bodie pulled his shoulders into that position that was not parade rest, not attention, but some square challenge that Doyle had only seen when Bodie’s mercenary past was suddenly present again. Across the pub were five or six big men in camos and knit caps, who saw Bodie too and began a kind of laughing cheer like a bad imitation of a kookaburra. They gathered round, ignored Doyle when Bodie introduced him, and were so rowdy that really, the only sensible response was a bar fight. Doyle was tempted himself, but held back and even allowed Bodie to push in front of him, though he resolved to have a talk with his partner later. The group of fighters spilled out into the street, Bodie and Doyle following, and then Doyle ended up one way with drunken locals throwing weak punches while Bodie disappeared another way, following the mad mercs with their howls and their knives.

Doyle called it in, but the policewoman at the call centre hadn’t seen those wildmen, and he felt squad cars would perhaps arrive Tuesday or so. Not exactly reliable backup. He ran after Bodie himself, toward the noise, hoping he wouldn’t have to use his gun.

But when he arrived, it was all over. One mercenary on the ground, out like the streetlight, which something had broken. One nearly-dead dog, of all things, teeth bared and holes in its side. It was bristly and muddy brown, poorly proportioned and ugly as a pile of shit, but it was still fighting even though there was blood all round it. Bodie was holding up his arm, which had two or three open gashes from near the elbow to almost the wrist—“Did it bite you?” Doyle reached for his gun because that creature needed to be a lot deader if it had given Bodie those wounds.

“No,” Bodie said hesitantly, as if he really meant yes. In any case, those gashes needed attention, so off they’d gone to the nearest urgent treatment centre.

Maybe the nurse there scared the flirtation out of Bodie. Not likely, but what else could it be?

 

2.

> _There's a beast_  
>  _And I let it run_  
>  _Now it's running_  
>  _My way_  
> 

October is waning. They’ve had two night-time obbos that Bodie hasn’t been to: once by calling in sick and once by just not showing up. Doyle would have flayed Bodie up port and down starboard if he hadn’t so clearly been miserably sleep-deprived. His eyes are like raw beefsteak between greyish heels of bread. They have an obbo in the car today, and Bodie frankly curls up as much as he can and puts his head down in the passenger seat. Doyle hasn’t the heart to disturb him, while he roots in his sleep, snuffles and yips.

But staring at the outside of a mews flat gives Doyle much too much time to think. He remembers that dying creature in the alley. He should have recognized it instantly, but how did it get there? Was it some kind of mad-merc mascot? Smuggled from Africa?

Bodie suddenly wakes, uncurls so quickly that he hits his head on the roof of the car. He makes a weird whooping sound, almost a laugh.

“Sounded like quite a knock,” Doyle says. “All right?”

“Maybe a bump?” Bodie lowers his head toward Doyle with another one of those odd new smiles.

It’s a lot less like joking than Doyle expects, and Bodie’s the one who usually ruffles Doyle’s hair, not the reverse. But now Doyle does what he could easily have done in September, in the rest room, and rubs the top of Bodie’s head. There’s no bump. Bodie lifts his head into the touch, manic glee on his face and that open-mouthed smile. “Ray, Ray-hey-hey-hey,” he says happily, and then turns his head and licks Doyle’s wrist.

“Bodie!” Doyle snatches his arm back.

Unabashed, Bodie pushes his face forward, swipes his cheek against the side of Doyle’s hand while it’s still in mid-air, makes a high, whining, giggling sound and licks again. “Yes, yes, Ray,” he says.

“Bodie, you berk, what are you doing?”

Squirming in his seat is what he’s doing. Kissing the side of Doyle’s face. Still making little—there’s no other description, really—hyena noises.

“At least you’re not licking your merc mates,” Doyle says, finding resignation somewhere in the general shock.

“Not my clan,” Bodie says.

Doyle tries to look stern. “We’re supposed to be working.”

“There’s nobody over there. I can smell it.” Then he suddenly lifts his head and asks, “What time is it?”

Doyle looks at his watch (while Bodie nuzzles his fingertips) and says, “Nearly six.”

“Six!” Bodie twists and scrambles, is opening the car door when Doyle gets a grip near his waist.

“You’re not going anywhere!”

“But Ray! The sun’s setting!” And it is, orange streaked in the sky and purple-grey clouds over the sun as it slides down to end the day. It seems sudden, but it’s really been happening the whole time Bodie’s been waking up.

Doyle holds on hard. “Let it,” he growls into the side of Bodie’s head, already hairier than usual.

The transition is weird, though not as grotesque as in the last werewolf film Doyle saw. Holding Bodie through it is more like holding two active toddlers in a sack than anything. The shape of hyena-Bodie doesn’t fit his jacket and shirt even a little, and there’s quite a bit of tearing before Doyle gets them off. Bodie’s teeth are big and sharp and very white, in a long jaw that is right next to Doyle’s face. The short hind legs are lost in Bodie’s trousers.

Strangely, his eyes are still blue. Even more strangely, Doyle isn’t afraid. Of course, it helps that Bodie is rubbing his nose and muzzle all over Doyle’s face and still making giggling noises. It’s not a dangerous look, except for the teeth.

“Now I’ve got you, what on earth do I do with you?”

 

3.

>   
>  _So take this night_  
>  _Wrap it around me like a sheet_  
>  _I know I'm not forgiven_  
>  _But I need a place to sleep_

Doyle takes his hyena home: what else? It’s not pleasant how the animal needs to mark around the whole flat-block, especially the front and back entrances, how very happy he is in the dustbin, or how he smells even before that (like polecat, Doyle thinks). Checking out the kitchen, hyena-Bodie stands on those short hind legs and still can pull down the dish-drying rack, the tea towels, a packet of breakfast cereal and the cinnamon. The tin’s lid is jolted off and brown powder goes everywhere. He races around the flat like a mad thing, then jumps onto the bed and makes a nest in the centre, in the blanket and duvet. Doyle looks on, appalled. The bedding is snagged and torn in four sets of claws.

Hyenas make terrible house pets.

Doyle sits on the edge of the bed, and Bodie squirms and rolls and cuddles, licks Doyle, licks himself. It develops that hyena-Bodie’s favourite game is rubbing the curve of his spine against Doyle while also licking his own penis, already crazily long even before he gives himself a blow job. Doyle laughs helplessly. Bodie wheezes back in hyena chuckles that sound almost like speech but still look like puppyish adoration.

Watching the hyena, Doyle is thinking of Bodie’s real face, which he’s seen at any time of day, from pulled out of bed at dawn to hearing the chimes at midnight. He’s seen that face when it looked brutal, angry, afraid—expressions he might, before, have called animalistic. He’s seen Bodie playful, almost every day. He’s seen how Bodie looks when he loses control in a wash of pleasure—during a blow job, in fact. He’s never seen any expression he could call puppyish. “Aren’t you embarrassed?”

Evidently not. Hyena semen spatters the bed.

“Disgusting,” Doyle says, and Bodie licks him, randomly, on the shoulder.

To head off more wanking, Doyle says, “Are you hungry?”

Fortunately, he has a chicken in the refrigerator. Pulling off the drumsticks for himself, he gives the rest to Bodie, who eats it in a few bites, bones and all. Shaking his head, he sprays the kitchen with shreds of raw meat and then goes back to the bed.

It’s a long evening.

At the end of it, Doyle tries to lie down on the sofa, but Bodie wants to get up on it too, and there’s not room. So they go back to the bed. Doyle takes the outside edge and shoves at Bodie, familiarity breeding contempt. Eight or nine stone of wild animal with teeth like a meat saw, and he’s elbowing it to move over. But then, Bodie does move. And they both sleep.

Doyle wakes to what feels like an earthquake, shaking and kicking and thrashing behind him. He rolls out of bed and whirls around to attack, but sees only Bodie, man-Bodie, naked and shaking, miserable. What can Ray do but get back onto the mattress and put his arms around his partner?

“Oh, Christ, Ray,” Bodie says into his shoulder. His arms are like iron around Ray and still the tremors run through him.

“Does it hurt?”

The pause before Bodie speaks is strangely long. “Yeah.” He sounds defeated and weary.

Doyle’s mind is racing, but all he can think of to ask is, “Can you take anything for it, do you think?”

Bodie snorts. “Try a chemist, shall we? ‘Excuse me, got anything for a sore were-hyena?’ You think Epsom salts?”

His voice is almost normal, so Doyle relaxes his arms to pull them away, but Bodie is still holding on hard, rubbing his face into Doyle’s neck. “Let me, give me something else to think of.” His fingers pick at the waistband of the pyjama bottoms Ray slept in.

Ray strokes up the strong, tense muscles of Bodie’s back, down his arms to his elbows. He doesn’t want to stop, but “After I call in for today’s assignment. Then we won’t be interrupted.” He kisses Bodie’s hairline, since it’s there, pulls back and is held still, waits and is reluctantly released. Bodie sits and stares where Ray was sitting.

Tenderness fills Ray like beer in a pint mug, up to his throat. He cups one stubbled cheek in his hand and lifts, so he can smile into those haunted blue eyes. “Clear away the mess while I’m calling?”

Bodie nods.

 

4.

> _There are things_  
>  _I regret_  
>  _You can't forgive_  
>  _You can't forget_  
> 

 

The good news is that they’re off until 5:00. The bad news is that they’re on again by the time night falls, and for hours after. That night obbo has grown into a night raid, and they’re part of it.

Ray finds that Bodie stripped the bed entirely, put down a new sheet, trashbagged the messy ones and poked the bag through the fire-escape door, so the hyena smells are almost gone. The two naked men meet on the clean linen. With a vague feeling of confirming Bodie’s normal body, Ray cards his fingertips through short, soft hair, nothing like the stiff brush at the top of a hyena’s head, traces the shape of Bodie’s round ears, licks the lobes. He traces his partner’s face like a blind man, lingering on delicate eyelids and ruffling those absurdly long eyelashes back and forth. He runs fingertips down the lines that seem deeper today, to the mouth set firm until Ray kisses it again, again, until Bodie makes a breathy, half-voiced sound that is not at all like a hyena.

Bodie’s not passive, he never is, but he seems content to rub any handy body part against whatever part of Ray is nearest. He seems to have nothing to prove, which means he’s proving that Ray can lead; Bodie can follow; Bodie’s _civilized_.

Civilization is not what they generally try for in bed. But Ray’s busy, so he lets it go for the moment.

His hands are on either side of Bodie’s long throat, greyish-pale with stubble under his chin, but not too rough even there. Ray thumbs the ledge of Bodie’s jaw, sweeps his palms over strong shoulders and kisses more deeply, tonguing blunt omnivore teeth. The tight muscles of Bodie’s back and sides relax under Ray’s hands. His skin, as always, is rich over the generous breadth of his body. Ray could touch him forever.

“Told you lately how bloody gorgeous you are?” he murmurs.

“Usually it’s me saying it,” and it’s as good to hear relaxed humour in that voice as it is to feel the vibrations in every place they touch.

Ray leans back just enough to look in Bodie’s eyes. Sweet pillow-talk isn’t really their style: Ray’s asking for a lot of trust. “Yes, 'tall dark and', but right now, really feel it. No joke, Bodie, what I see—what all your bed partners see—is all this magnificent muscle, all this amazing smooth man skin.” _Man_ skin, that’s the point, and Bodie’s eyes are too wide and wary even now, so Ray goes on, “I’m like a monkey next to you,” smiling because he likes his own body too, and he knows Bodie does.

But Bodie’s arms are hard again, and he peels Ray off to hold him away, frowning. “Oh, no. You know damn well— _bloody_ well, sunshine—” but whatever Bodie’s saying is lost in some stronger feeling, and he just pulls Ray back against him and takes his mouth fiercely. His tongue is most eloquent when no words are involved.

Ray answers with long strokes along Bodie’s flanks, up and down the backs of his thighs, fingering the bends of his knees until Bodie rolls to his back and raises them. Ray plays with the hair on his calves, circles his ankles, drags fingertips across the soles of his feet. “Head to toe,” he whispers. “Beautiful.”

Bodie moves his legs, and now their cocks are lined up, heads and undersides. Every breath shifts their heat and inflames it, slides the cords of their veins together. The way Bodie holds Ray between his thighs, the flush on his face and dilated eyes, usually means a growl, but instead he clears his throat and says clearly, “You know what I want.”

Ray does. Reluctantly, because their skins are so delicious together, he sits up and thinks for a moment, then needs to leave the bed for the bathroom cabinet where the slick is. On the way back, he stops dead, staring. Bodie is opening himself with both hands, the tips of his middle fingers just at his anus and the strain of triceps and wrists under his thighs perfectly visible, utterly improbable, and incredibly hot. Ray’s mouth opens—he’s sure he had something to say—but no words happen until his feet move again, so he is almost back to Bodie by the time he says hoarsely, “You look like you want fisting,” not sure himself whether he wants the answer to be yes or no.

Bodie’s been looking vaguely in the direction of what he’s doing, though he can’t see it, and his lips are wet and parted. “Er, no,” sounds uncertain. Ray puts lube into him and kisses wildly at the same time, sloppy in both places. It’s too crowded, but Bodie moves his hands and his legs to put them back in a more familiar position. Ray’s cock is just going in, while he can’t help but keep thinking of fists and hyena-Bodie’s prick, when he loses control of his mouth and says, “Too bad I don’t have a cock like your night-time one.”

Bodie freezes.

Ray is so surprised that he stops too.

Pain and anger fill Bodie’s face. His cock is already smaller than it was. Ray stammers, “I, I just meant, I wanted this to be,” and he doesn’t understand himself, because he and Bodie are about the same size, and it’s a good one. “I’m sorry.”

Bodie’s expression smooths out. He’s as withdrawn as if he has already left the flat. “It was fine,” he said in a dull voice. “Would have been.” Then, intensely, “I don’t want an animal. Don’t want _you_ to want an animal.”

“I don’t. You’re not.”   Ray knows that he’s not going to get what he still wants, not right now, anyway. He leaves the cradle of Bodie’s thighs, turns so that his erection isn’t pointing so aggressively, sits on the edge of the bed and looks over his shoulder. Bodie lowers his legs. Ray puts one hand on his arm and kisses his forehead. Those blue eyes are still dark and inward-looking; his mouth is pinched small. “Look, let’s … let’s start again. Maybe breakfast first, you hungry?” because that’s something that never changes.

 

5.

>   
>  _So take this night_  
>  _And lay me down on the street_  
> 

 

They eat; they do, in the end, have sex, and Bodie seems somewhat comforted, though he gets tense again over the course of the afternoon.

“If we check in right away at 5:00,” Doyle suggests, “we can circle back to the car near sunset, leave your clothes there …”

“Hang the CI5 ID round me neck?” It sounds joking, but the whites of Bodie’s eyes are showing above and below the blue irises.

Ray’s serious, and he needs Bodie to know it. “I’ll guard your back, you pillock.”

“Ah, come on, Ray. How would you explain a ruddy great beast in a CI5 raid? What the hell will I do there anyway?”

Doyle grins. “You’ll save me.”

Bodie looks down, but his mouth makes that little quiet curve Doyle has missed. “S’pose I shouldn’t leave you all on your own. Who knows what trouble you could fall into?”

Shaking his head, Doyle thinks he should have known this was the tack to take. He remembers it later, driving, as he looks past the afternoon glare on the windscreen. Bodie’s fidgeting, tapping the arm rest, making faces to himself. “C’mon, back me up,” Doyle says, getting out of the car.

It’s Jax’s op, so they check in with him. While Bodie chats with Murphy, Doyle looks over Jax’s shoulder to see the sketch map he’s using and says as low as he safely can, “Mop-up position, maybe? Bodie’s not a hundred percent today,” and as Jax looks up, concerned, “He’s all right. Mostly,” which is the kind of thing one partner says when the other has a minor sprain (not knee or ankle) or a bad stomach.

Jax glances over at Bodie, then says, “I need a team here at the other end of the mews block,” and Doyle nods. There’s a little railed bit of green, a bush and a signpost, next to a police box, and a space between buildings, not quite an alley. He’d station someone there himself, if he were directing this action.

It’s still Daylight Savings Time, thank goodness. In a few days, the sun will set before 5:00. Doyle tries to think what they’ll do then, but not much comes to him. Bodie’s still making rounds among the other male agents, as if he hasn’t seen any of them for weeks. He avoids the women. It’s marked enough that a few people are glancing at him, then away. Doyle catches his eye and starts moving back to the car. Bodie follows.

The Capri’s in an alley, a big van blocking the passage beyond. It’s a good spot to let Bodie undress as the light fades. Doyle’s never seen so much of Bodie’s skin outdoors, can’t help watching from his spot near the boot. When the clothes are off, Doyle steps close—Bodie clearly needs this embrace too—and they stand breathing together until the change begins.

The hyena’s front paws drop to the street. The heavy neck bends; the muzzle points toward the ground. Doyle sits down, not caring what’s under him, and hugs the furry head, one arm across the back where the shoulders are sharp enough to deserve the word “blades.” He doesn’t know why his eyes are suddenly wet, but Bodie sniffs and licks, making him wetter than a few tears could. With a short, strained laugh that’s more like a cough, Ray stands.

When they are in place, Doyle gives his RT a blip to say so, and then there’s nothing to do but wait. “Hate this part,” he mutters, and Bodie gives that mad hyena grin and whirls around chasing his tail until Ray pats the air to tell him to stop.

Jax’s voice on the RT says “Go, go!” but the noise is still far away. Door-breaking, yells and gunshots, feet pounding, and Doyle can’t tell whether anyone’s coming toward them.

Bodie’s ears are up and the ridge of hair from the top of his head to the end of his spine is standing on end. His tail is stretched out level to the ground, and he begins to growl and bark in a grunting way: “Eeaah! Eh-uh-aah!” It’s such a display that Doyle almost misses the sounds of running feet as they draw near, until Bodie makes a high, keening sound and then a loud, chattery hyena laugh, bounding in front of Doyle.

Two men burst out between the buildings. Their guns are in their hands, and Doyle draws, but it’s Bodie who reaches the first man, an arrow of teeth and fur, biting just past the man’s grip on his gun. He screams, thrashing, and falls. Doyle gets the second man in his sights, but can’t even get his attention because he’s staring at the hyena. He jumps back and scrambles to escape. Bodie leaves the first man and jumps on the second one’s chest, muzzle inches from terrified eyes, and blood dripping from those sneering lips. The second man goes limp—he’s fainted. It’s over almost before Ray realizes it has even started. He laughs aloud, the human sound weird in the air. Then he cuffs the first man to the second because the first man’s gun arm is broken just above the wrist.

The second wave arrives while Doyle’s on the RT, and it is much worse: other hyenas, four—no, five. They run in single file, then spread out and surround Doyle and Bodie. They’re noisy: snarling, laughing, howling, tails up and fluffed out almost like cats'. All the animals are jumping, weaving, dodging, until it’s hard to tell Bodie from the rest except by the directions of attack. Bodie turns from one biting jaw to another animal rushing Doyle, spins and snaps at a third. Doyle fires when he can, but either he’s missing, or the hyenas are ignoring the body wounds, though a lucky bullet seems to have taken a front paw almost off one of them.

Doyle decides to choose one and focus on it: he fires until his clip is empty and that one does drop. Most of the head is blown away. Ray steps behind Bodie and reloads, tries again and blasts the shoulder off another. Bodie is worrying the throat of the hyena he’s fighting, and a sudden gush of blood shows he’s won. Now there’s only one left. Bodie faces off with it, but instead of darting in as the others did, it jumps back, behind the police box, and when the partners follow, they see it in mid-transformation. In a few moments, a tall, muscular, naked man is half-lying at the curb.

Doyle recognizes him. It’s one of the mercenaries from the pub.

He doesn’t remember any of the names, couldn’t have told them apart anyway. But there’s something that feels even more urgent. “You can change at will?” he says. “ _At will_? Day or night?”

The man frowns. “Yes.” He looks at Bodie, then back at Doyle. “You’re the CI5 partner.”

A gun wound in the man’s side is bleeding freely. Some kind of belt or band is clenched in his other hand. As he struggles to sit up, the ends flop back and forth. “What happens now? You arresting me? Gonna shoot me now one bullet can kill me?”

Bodie growls. Doyle puts his hand on the back of Bodie’s head. “They’ll be here in a moment,” he says. “You should—” and without waiting for the end of the sentence, Bodie shakes himself and trots away.

RT in one hand, gun in the other, Doyle stares at the merc and wants him in an interrogation room _right now_ , but not for Jax’s op.

 

6.

>   
>  _There's a game_  
>  _That I play_  
>  _There are rules_  
>  _I had to break_  
> 

“Bodie.”

At least the mercenary isn’t naked now, though he looks almost as strange in Towser’s spare jogging suit.

“Bodie.”

Jax is in front of the table, leaning over the fists on its surface. The mercenary sprawls on the chair across from him. Doyle leans against the wall and imagines the violence he will not be allowed to commit.

“Bring Bodie.” _Fucking echo chamber, he is._

Of course, everyone in the interrogation room looks at Doyle. “First thing in the morning,” he tells Jax, who grimaces.

“I’ll talk to Bodie,” their prisoner insists. “He’ll want to talk to me.”

“Charming illusion.” The dry humour might be Bodie speaking: it’s Jax. Then he stands straight, turns to Doyle. “You explain to Cowley, then.” They leave the room. Jax exchanges a few words with the two B-team members on guard outside.

Doyle goes home to wait for dawn.

Not much later, the moment Bodie is his own shape again, he grabs Ray’s face and gives him a long, fierce kiss. Then he purses his lips in a smile and says, “Mac. I’ll _wring him out._ ”

Before he actually enters the interrogation cell, though, he pulls Jax aside. “Susan here today?”

“Think so.”

“Bring her in,” Bodie says.

When she arrives, he ducks his head with that weird deference and shocks Doyle out of a year’s growth by asking her, “Do you know much about hyenas?”

He has her by the arm; she tries to pull away. “ _Hyenas_?”

Bodie doesn’t let go, in fact leans in. “This man believes he is a hyena. He thinks I’m one, too. But we’re both male, and boss hyenas are female. You’ll go through him like a knife through butter, Susan.” It’s so strange to hear that lowered voice, see that admiring smile, and realise there’s not an ounce of sexual approach in it. Susan visibly absorbs that absence, and gives that feral grin she has.

“We should get Ross,” she says.

Bodie lets go. “I’m saving her for later.”

Susan unbuttons her jacket, leaving her holster visible. “Worth a try.” She goes in.

The prisoner isn’t bashful, has a rebellious air as Susan interrogates him, but he does give his name, Donncha MacNamara, age of 37, place of birth in Antrim, some other semi-helpful details. He won’t say who hired him, won’t explain the job more than “muscle,” and asks for Bodie again.

So he shrugs and goes in. Doyle doesn’t stray from the door. Voices come clearly through the vent; the little window above the knob shows almost all of the room.

“Mac,” Bodie says in that cool, distant interrogator’s voice.

MacNamara sits up. He’s more intent than hostile. “Bodie. Long time.”

“Fourteen years.”

“Until that night in the pub and last night.” Half MacNamara’s mouth smirks. “We’ve missed you. Xave says you messed up our luck.”

“Jojo did that.”

“No. The witch did that. Her curse, her gift.”

Doyle, observing, baffled, can only tell this is important by the tension in Bodie’s shoulders and back and the tightness of his voice when he asks, “How do you stop it?’

MacNamara laughs briefly. “You don’t. Once you’ve got skin in this game,” and he chuckles again, “there’s no going back.”

“Skin,” Jax says, over Doyle’s shoulder, and strides down the corridor.

“Since you’re one of us, don’t see why you hold back.” MacNamara’s voice is smooth, would be persuasive elsewhere.

“I’m not,” Bodie says. “You think this tempts me?”

“It would have then. Running, fighting, using your teeth, what’s better?”

Bodie grins without humour. “Driving. Using a gun. Planning instead of luck.”

Jax is back with one of the envelopes CI5 uses for personal effects. He takes a strip of something out of it, and Doyle remembers what MacNamara was holding while he lay in the street. Doyle takes the thing from Jax and looks at it: long as a belt but with no buckle or other fastening, edges ragged, leather smooth on one side, furry on the other. Bristly tan fur with darker stripes. Hyena fur. Hyena skin. _Skin in the game_.

Doyle steps into the room with the belt in his hand. Bodie reaches for it, but then waves him off: “Give it to Susan, mate.”

Susan holds it in both hands, turns it over, ruffles the fur, turns up the smooth side and fingers it.

MacNamara twitches his shoulders with each of her movements, as if he feels the touches on his arms, his neck. Even his hands, flat on the table, are quivering. Susan seems absorbed in the belt. Bodie stares at the prisoner. Doyle looks between them and then asks MacNamara, “Who’d you get it from?” MacNamara barely bothers to glance at him before he’s back to staring at Susan’s hands. “Or is it your own?”

MacNamara smiles, or bares his teeth. “Cut it myself.”

For a moment, Doyle believes him, can think of nothing but fur and blood. But Bodie’s hand is on his arm; his voice is comforting: “No, Ray, he’s lying. How would he hold the knife?”

Susan looks baffled. Doyle can only imagine what Jax thinks they’re talking about. Bodie goes to the interrogator’s chair, flips it around so that the back is to MacNamara, and straddles it. He crosses his arms on the top of the chair and says, conversationally, “I see that you could do each other if you timed it right. Have you all got these … belts?”

“No, what would they all need them for?”

Bodie gives that a moment, then says, “You’re such a bastard, Mac,” as if he means it, can’t help but say it.

“But you, Bodie, you’d have one,” MacNamara is still coaxing.

Bodie rolls his eyes.

“Anyway, you killed them—well, all but Yves and Nicky. Just like the bultungin job.”

“You all attacked.” Bodie leans forward. “Try to kill me and my partner, Mac, and I’ll take you down any way I can.”

Mac shrugs and says, “Such loya—” but he cuts himself off to stare at Susan, who has folded up the strip of fur and is holding it tightly in one hand.

Her eyes meet Doyle’s. “I think … I don’t believe what I’m thinking.”

“It would make things easier if you didn’t,” Doyle answers.

She looks at her hand, at MacNamara, at the back of Bodie’s head. “Is that old story about silver true?’

MacNamara laughs, a short barking noise.

Doyle shrugs. “Don’t know.”

“We could try it.” She turns toward the door, her fist of hyena fur still in mid-air. “We can get Cowley and try it.”

Next to Doyle is a soft exhalation. He’s heard it before when Bodie closes his eyes in frustration or pain. Ray wants so badly to touch that he drives his nails into his palms and all but holds his own breath.

Their reactions don’t stop Susan from saying, “That chain of yours, Doyle—it’s real?”

“Sterling.” He has no idea whether 92% silver is enough. This particular necklace was a gift from Bodie. Ray unclasps it. The chain pools in his hand, cool and bright.

“Cowley—” Susan begins again, but the cell door is opening, and Jax and Cowley come in together.

“ _Mister_ Cowley,” says the man himself.

Bodie sits very still, doesn’t turn to greet the newcomers.

Doyle gives in, but it’s not his own risk, so he asks Bodie, “Shall we?”

“Need proof, I suppose.” His face is turned down.

Doyle is reminded of the hyena next to the Capri. Still he dare not touch. He nods to Susan, and they both walk round the table to flank MacNamara. Doyle crosses his wrists and holds the neck-chain like a garrotte. It fits snugly round the prisoner’s neck. Now that he’s so close, Doyle smells polecat and sees the shivering that MacNamara has been bluffing through.

Susan unfurls part of the strip of fur and drapes it across MacNamara’s face.

The change starts immediately. Doyle pulls the chain as tight as he can against the bulging hyena neck. The muzzle whips back and forth in mid-transformation, almost throwing Ray off, and now he is afraid of the teeth. But as he pulls harder, wrestling, Susan grabs back the fur strip, and MacNamara is human again, still fighting, surging to his feet. Now Susan, Cowley, Jax, and Bodie all have their guns on him.

Ray lets one end of the chain go, and it falls over his wrist.

“Do sit down, Mr MacNamara,” Cowley purrs, as Susan comes to his side.

As Doyle moves to Bodie’s, he stands, stiffly, re-holstering his weapon. Doyle puts his necklace back on. Bodie squares his shoulders and faces Cowley. They stare at each other for a few long moments.

“Burn it,” Bodie says.

“I’ll decide that, 3.7. You and 4.5 may go. You are on standby.”

“You don’t even know how to do it!” MacNamara shouts.

Bodie says, “We’ll work it out,” without turning, and now he grips Ray’s shoulder.

As they pass through the door, MacNamara is still yelling, “Bodie! You need me!”

It’s not even lunchtime yet—no reason Bodie shouldn’t drive. Still, for a while he doesn’t start the car. “I will not ever need Mac,” he says at last.

 _Again_ , Doyle almost hears. “Did you see,” he says, answering, “Cowley didn’t turn a hair?”

 

7.

>   
>  _There’s mistakes_  
>  _That I made_  
>  _But I made them_  
>  _My way_  
> 

 

Doyle has never skinned an animal. Bodie has to teach him. They get some euthanised dog corpses from Battersea Dog’s Home with a flash of their CI5 wallets and some prevarication.

The work is awful, and Doyle can’t look ahead at what he’ll be doing with this skill. He’s nervy and ratty, and at one point he yells at Bodie, damning the whole continent of Africa and all the mercenaries who ever fought there. Bodie yells back, “I suppose you’d rather do nothing, just let it go on and do nothing! You’ll just let me—” and he puffs breath in and out, his eyes hot.

“I have your back,” Doyle grates out, because neither of them has a church, but this is their faith and their creed. He takes his knife in his fist and bends over the next dog, deciding whether to try along its ribs or from shoulder down the front leg. Neither gives him the even strip he’s trying for. Bodie watches over his shoulder, no advice either time. If Doyle can’t succeed in the next few tries, they’ll need more dead dogs.

Desperately trying for some sort of conversation, Doyle says, “Those first few nights, when you weren’t with me, what did you do? How’d you manage?”

Bodie’s voice is as grim as Doyle has ever heard it. “I ate a Chihuahua and some pigeons. Rats. Slept in vacant lots. Shat in the gutter. Never saw Mac and the others, don’t know where they were.”

“I see.” He bends to the last dog, tries picking up the skin just behind the shoulder blade.   Cutting along the spine, over the back ribs, makes the best band of skin and fur so far, though “best yet” is still not something he’d want to keep in his own pocket. Bodie’s pale, smooth, muscled back—his beautiful, beautiful back—fills Doyle’s imagination. If he lets his hands shake, he’ll drop the knife. He doesn’t know how they’ll survive this: how Bodie can ever forgive him; how Bodie can live with this debt; how Doyle himself will bear the memory.

All too soon, it’s too late to wonder.

Bodie is tied to the area railing and muzzled—his own idea. The street lamp makes a circle of light around Doyle and his hyena, glints from the blade. He takes a deep breath and picks at the skin, next to the mane running down the backbone. The fur is thicker than the dogs’. The knife bites in, saws in, while Bodie trembles and makes helpless, muffled sounds. Blood runs down. It tracks down his side, down to the street, pooling on the pavement, shining. Doyle saws, grits his teeth. He’s also making small, agonized sounds as the blade keeps catching, pulling, rasping.

The strip of Bodie’s bleeding skin hangs down. Doyle's breathing gusts, sobs, as he cuts it off. He wants to fling it to the ground, but instead drapes it over Bodie’s spine so he can cut the ropes, then has to grab the yielding, wet handful and keep it from falling to the ground while Bodie transforms from dripping hyena to dripping naked man on his hands and knees on the pavement. Now Doyle can drop the damn knife and grab Bodie’s arm to help him up and inside.

Bodie wants a shower before they bandage where he's been skinned. In his own form the wound looks shorter, more superficial. Doyle puts on crème and gauze and tape while Bodie shivers and swears. Then, hands flat on skin, Ray says, “Come to bed.”

Muscles are still jumping on Bodie’s back, in his arms and legs. He’s a little unsteady, standing, bending to pick up clothes. Holding his pants open, he waits a few seconds before picking up one foot, then puts it through and down in one motion, almost normal in its grace. Then the other.

“Bodie.”

“You don’t _own_ me, Doyle!”

Ray’s hands fall to his sides. He takes a step away and watches Bodie pull up and fasten his trousers. “No,” and he never meant his voice to sound like that. “I don’t.”

He refuses to see those blue eyes hard and distant. Ray knows he should go into the kitchen and ask lightly about a cuppa, or to the drinks cabinet and pour a scotch. Instead he watches Bodie’s fingers closing flies, gingerly easing on a jumper, pulling on and buttoning a shirt. Strapping on his holster, much as it must rub the bandage. Last of all, picking up his band of fur, which has stopped bleeding and assumed a smooth, tanned look that they did nothing to produce. Why that transformation seems more magical than the other one, Ray does not know.

The door closes after Bodie quite gently.

Bodie’s blood is on Doyle’s clothes. He needs to change them, but first he puts the security locks on, with hands that shake more than they did while he was skinning his partner.

Making an omelette and eating it gives him something to do for a while. By the time he has washed up, he’s decided to throw away the stained t-shirt, jeans and trainers. Even if the blood can be removed, these clothes will carry Bodie’s pain forever. As Ray takes out the rubbish, the stench of hyena fills his throat and makes him cough. It touches off that deep anger again. He wouldn’t have believed that Bodie would put on that animal body just to pee round the flat block like a bloody dog.

Doyle drives to HQ as if the car under his hands, and all the other cars on the road as well, were his enemy. He doesn’t tend to swear at traffic, but he thinks what he would say if he were that kind of driver. While stopped, he hits the wheel. The streetlights blur and sharpen.

The HQ building seems empty, but he knows it’s just Bodie that is missing. He goes to Records and tries to look up hyena transformations; unsurprisingly, there’s no information there. Doyle goes to the rest room to drink bad tea and think the matter over. Eventually, he remembers that his CI5 ID will get him into the Reading Room at the British Museum. Under that gold and blue dome, feeling like someone’s going to throw him out any minute for being uncouth and uneducated, he orders well-worn books from the catalog, pages through them, returns them. He finds brief anthropological references to that word MacNamara used, which is translated as “I change myself into a hyena.”

Doyle’s laugh is bitter. Of course it means that.

He goes back to HQ and down to the gym, where he tries to wear out his emotions on the big bag that, normally, he seldom uses. Then he tries target shooting and running. The only real effect is that, by the time he’s done running, he has decided he’ll invest in some more silver.

 

8.

>   
>  _I know I'm not forgiven_  
> 

 

By nightfall the next day, Bodie has still not called. Doyle only allows himself to phone at dusk. There’s no answer, so he slams down the handset and walks out the door. There must be something he can do for Jax’s op, or, well, something. There'll still be people at HQ.

He doesn’t make it to the car.

Darting from behind the rubbish bin, three hyenas surround him, and he turns to keep them in view though he can't see much in the streetlight-striped dark. Their jaws are open, teeth glinting; their laughter is harsh and hungry; they jump forward and back, playing with him, meaning his death. Maybe his gun will be enough, but he brings out the silver-bladed knife he bought, shows it to them, and the largest recoils.

“MacNamara, I presume?” Doyle says, and can’t help a feral grin of his own as he slashes at the nearest hyena. It jerks and howls out of all proportion to the cut he’s given it, and he’s heartened. Maybe silver does have power.

The others circle and taunt him, and he pulls his gun, the knife in his other hand, outnumbered.

Then he hears an animal commotion to his left, and he’s almost sure, but not completely until it jumps between him and the others, fighting on his side. It’s less of a joke than usual when he half-shouts, “What took you so long?”

MacNamara, if he’s the largest, wants Doyle and keeps trying to get around Bodie. Doyle fires at him, but he always seems to be elsewhere. A shot too far right, another too far left, one while MacNamara’s jumping that Ray would swear went underneath. Bodie has one of the others by an ear and is shaking him back and forth, not lethal but bloody and fierce—and dominant, by the way the other hyena is crouching low and making higher, weaker noises. Doyle abandons MacNamara for the moment, steps closer to Bodie and fires right into the other hyena’s head. Bodie flinches back and snaps in Ray’s direction.

“Beg your pardon,” Ray says sarcastically, then goes for MacNamara while Bodie leaps at the third hyena.

Crowding MacNamara into the side of the dustbin, into shadow, Doyle thrusts with the knife, his whole weight behind it, and feels the point go in, the rough scrape past a rib, the thud of the body against the bin, and the teeth catching in the sleeve of his jacket. He lunges back, the teeth fall free, and he kicks, snarling at the animal as it snarls back. He stabs again, but this time MacNamara doesn’t snap, though his body jerks with the impact.

Bodie is standing over the body of the third hyena, which lies flat on its side with its mouth open.

“Thanks,” Doyle tells him, but Bodie's going, running, not responding. “Bodie!” Ray knows how absurd it is to try to outrun an animal that hunts by coursing, yet he keeps on. “Bodie!”

He can't see Bodie but can hear a man's shouts and hyena chatter, as well as those grunting barks. Then he can see the animal control van ahead. Ray runs harder. “Oi!” The animal control officer glances toward Doyle but sensibly looks back at the animal, waving the catchpole slowly back and forth. Bodie is dodging and jumping. _Change back, dozy sod!_ “That's―” Doyle begins, thinks, _not mine._ Tries again: “I know that creature. He belongs to a friend. I can make sure he gets home.”

The catchpole lowers; the man stares; Bodie bites the end of the pole and snaps it off. The officer says crossly, “You have a license for it?”

 _“_ _I_ don't,” Doyle says, trying to sound meek. “But I know where the proper paperwork is,” though Bodie's proper paperwork says nothing about this situation, even in the fine print.

The animal control officer grimaces. “Got away from you, didn't he? How do I know you can keep him in proper control?”

Bodie ducks his head a little. Ray asks, “Well, Bodie?” _Otherwise it's a tranquilizer dart._ Somehow the hyena face looks sardonic, but all the same, Bodie minces over to Doyle's side as lightly as a cat, but more compliantly. He nudges Doyle's knee and licks his fingers, lowers his ears and tucks in his chin like a dog abashed.

“I suppose it's best with you, then,” the officer says, relieved.

“Come along.” Doyle speaks mostly for the man's benefit, but Bodie does follow.

Back in Doyle's flat, Bodie shakes himself. The fur strip falls away, and Bodie's hand snatches it up as soon as it shifts out of fur-paw shape. For a moment Bodie's on hands and knees on the rug; then he's away to the shower. Doyle gets out clothes Bodie left there for one of the times he spent the night, the last clean set.  

In the lounge, Doyle waits on the sofa, looking at the stereo and the telly, not turning either of them on. It doesn't take very long for Bodie to wash and dress, but he has no shoes here and comes out of the bedroom carrying a pair of Ray's although they're a size too large. “You mind?” he asks.

“And if I did?” It should be banter; somehow it's not.

Bodie shrugs, but sits down. He looks at the shoes, hanging motionless from his fingers. Doyle watches a little while until he has to ask, “What was the bultungin job?”

That startles Bodie into movement, and he loosens the shoelaces, slips the shoes on, ties them. “A gang of raiders, they told us. Ran a protection racket out of one of the hyena villages, where they caught and trained them, turned them into servants, turned into hyenas themselves―the stories were all confused. Or we were confused because none of us spoke Portuguese. Or much French. Or any Kanuri.” His voice shifts as he speaks, rueful to blank to ashamed, the last so rare for Bodie that Doyle is not sure he recognizes it. “Basically, they pointed us at this mob of natives and we killed any of them we could, and the animals as well. Took our pay and got out.”

Doyle nudges again but keeps his eyes on the coffee table: “And were cursed?”

With a shrug, Bodie says, “I can hardly believe it now, and it's happened. I didn't even think it then. And it's been fourteen years.”

Neither looks at the other. Eventually, Doyle asks, “Why'd you run? I called you.”

“Doyle.” Bodie's brows are level, his mouth a short line. He waits until Ray meets his eyes. “Am I a partner or a pet?”

All the anger of the day, of all these days, lifts Doyle to the balls of his feet, clenches his fists. “You _bastard,_ you _prick!_ I should pound you! Goddamn, what've I done, what've I ever done!” He whirls around, looking for something to smash, but nothing's nearby. There's not even a book to throw at the wall. He turns back to Bodie, whose mouth has relaxed, and shouts, “Who's got the belt, then? Who controls the change?”

“I do.”

“Right stupid, am I? If I want a fucking _pet_ , to help you have a choice?”

He keeps glaring. He wants a real answer.

Bodie looks back for a long moment, then says, “All me life, really, it's been manipulative and stupid or manipulative and clever.”

Doyle gives himself an equal amount of time, and the same again after, to let those words settle in his mind, to let the anger fall like mercury in a cooling thermometer, to room temperature. “You prat,” he says when he can say it fondly, and walks over to rub the back of Bodie's head, ruffle his silky hair, pull his forehead to Ray's own.

He lets his partner begin the kiss. Standing, Bodie pulls them together, wraps his arms around Ray's back. In return, Ray only grips his shoulders, leaving that skinned strip alone, tilts his head as Bodie guides it, opens his mouth easily. It seems like weeks, months, since he has had this, since he could let his head fall back into Bodie's cradling hands and feel lips and tongue and just the edges of teeth on his throat, up and down, breathe through his mouth and shiver with the currents of pleasure running down his body. When Bodie lifts his mouth away and pauses, Ray leaves his eyes shut. Let Bodie look. Let him stop or keep going.

Holding Ray's hand, Bodie leads him into the bedroom.

 

9.

 

> _But I hope that I'll be given_  
>  _Some peace_  
> 
> 
> _Some peace_  
>  _Some peace_

 

It's not civilized.

Lying on the bed, Ray feels and sees Bodie above him, Bodie's wrists brushing Ray's labouring ribs on each side, knees outside knees. Bodie kisses everywhere from ribs to thighs, using tongue and teeth as he had on Ray's neck, and his whole, wide-open mouth, sucking roughly and gently by turns, eating Ray alive, moving as he squirms, snuffling and humming, moaning and speaking words Ray can't hear because he's talking too: “Oh Christ, you'll kill me, Bodie, Bodie! Do it, blow me, crazy sweet maniac, put your mouth―put it―” and at last he does, moving between Ray's legs, holding his arse in hard, broad hands, palms so warm and his mouth so hot. Ray bucks upward, but Bodie's strong enough to hold him, throat deep enough to take him, milk him, draw his orgasm from every limb through his cock as it seems to explode.

Expecting to be fucked or at least frotted, Ray waits, trembling with aftershocks like strobe lights, but when he gets his eyes open, Bodie is still between Ray's legs, sitting back on his heels, watching with lambent eyes. Bodie's thick human cock is red and wet and seems to quiver with his panting breath and wild, hard pulse. Ray reaches out, both hands still shaking, and Bodie grabs them tight and pulls them toward his erection, making Ray sit up. He finds he can move his legs around, get on his stomach with his elbows under him, and grasps the root of Bodie's prick in one fist while pushing the other hand under to tease balls and perineum. Bodie arches so far back that he almost tips off the bed, and there's an awkward moment when Ray abandons the blow job to pull Bodie up and into a better position. Ray wants to suck for a long time, or anyway as long as he can.

So Bodie is half-sitting against the headboard, one knee up and Ray with balls in one hand and Bodie's hip in the other, his lips sliding on and off the berry-bright head, tonguing and sipping and turning his head back and forth as Bodie puts both hands in his hair and kneads at his scalp, fingering his curls, smiling the most glorious smile that Ray mostly misses as he licks stripes from pubic hair to tip. Ray swirls his tongue, almost nibbles at the top and does nibble on the sides, and Bodie moves one hand to Ray's cheek to circle in the mixed pre-come and saliva. Ray sucks, and Bodie's fingers press where his cheek hollows. They're bouncing the mattress as Bodie pumps his hips, faster and faster until suddenly he's still, jerks three short times and then collapses, arms and legs limp and his head bumping the headboard, then slipping to his side. Ray can't see. He can't keep all that Bodie has sprayed into his throat, and some spills into the bed, but he swallows what he can and gets to his knees to take Bodie's head on his shoulder and bring them as tightly together as they can manage.

Ray's mouth is in Bodie's sweaty hair; Bodie's eyelashes sweep against Ray's collarbone. They breathe in the same rhythm for a long time, as the night wraps around them.

“Thanks for the backup,” Ray says eventually. Bodie smiles without lifting his head.

“I'll save you.” His voice is a little fuzzy. Long enough after that Ray thinks he's asleep, he adds, “Do you really think I'd like fisting? That you would?”

Ray shrugs the shoulder Bodie's head is on. “You take three fingers like you were born to it. And we’ve done four. No way to know but try. You tell me.”

“Sometimes you lay me open like a book,” Bodie says after another sleepy pause. “Sometimes I need it.”

Ray nods, his chin pressing the top of Bodie's head. “Sometimes I want to take you apart, go farther than I should, maybe.”

“No. No guilt.”

Understanding what Bodie means—that they don’t need anyone else’s forgiveness—Ray thinks how hard a lesson that is to really learn, for both of them.

They kiss at length, with all they know about each other, with all that nobody else knows. “You're getting good at this.” Bodie gives one of his pouting, smirking smiles that usually make Ray roll his eyes, but which always give him a jolt of tender amusement. “Good thing you've had me to teach you everything you know.”

Ray chuckles. “Go right on thinking that.” Now he’s the one to lay his head on Bodie's shoulder. “Let me know when you're getting cramped, mm? Stiff.”

“Oh,”―Bodie presses his groin into Ray's hip―“you'll know when I get stiff.”

“Prat.” Ray sighs across Bodie's throat, then licks the closest skin. “I _don't_ own you, o'course. But we belong to each other.”

Bodie kisses across Ray's forehead, at the hairline. “You talk too much, sunshine.”

“Then let's sleep.” Ray's hand lies on Bodie's cheek. He feels immersed, every sense full of Bodie.

When he dreams, they’re still together, running, both in fur. The sun glares hot on them, though the scene around them keeps changing: veldt, village, London streets. They’ll take their prey wherever they are, at Cowley’s call if he gives it. Ray opens his toothy jaw and the nerves jittering along his spine come out in laughter. Bodie joins in.

**Author's Note:**

> There's one tiny genuine piece of research here (because I could not find genuine folklore about hyena transformation), and that's the word _bultungin_ and its meaning, which I just appropriated.


End file.
